Furniture items used for seating commonly comprise a support structure covered by upholstery and/or cushioning. In particular, sofas typically comprise a seat base, a back rest and at least one arm rest. A common aesthetic and practical design consideration is assembling the sofa to minimize the visible gaps between the subcomponents. Similarly, if the components are not properly aligned during assembly, the misaligned subcomponents can form an uneven edge between the subcomponents creating an unpleasant aesthetic appearance. Typically, the furniture item is fully assembled at the factory by factory workers or machinery to ensure the individual subcomponents are properly assembled and aligned to minimize the appearance of visible gaps or uneven edges in the assembled furniture item.
The inherent drawback of assembling the furniture item at the factory is that the L-shape of the back and seat rest assembly typical of the seating portion of sofas often prevents efficient packing of the furniture items for transport. Depending on the shape and size of subcomponents of the furniture item, inefficient packing of the furniture item can result in a significant amount of dead space within the shipping container or truck. In addition to increasing the cost of transportation, the dead space can allow the furniture items to shift during transport resulting in potential injury when the shipping containers are opened or damage to the furniture item itself. Similarly, the awkward shape of the assembled furniture items can make it difficult to navigate into or through a home or other structure without significant positioning and reorienting of the furniture item often resulting in injury to the movers and/or damage to the furniture or the structure.
An approach to addressing the drawbacks of factory assembled furniture items comprises providing individually upholstered subcomponents as a ready to assemble (“RTA”) furniture kit that can be assembled by the end user. The individual subcomponents can be more efficiently packed than the fully assembled furniture item and allows the furniture item to be assembled in situ, thereby eliminating the need for navigating the assembled furniture item through the building. However, the inherent challenge of providing RTA furniture kits is that the consumers who assemble the furniture kits are typically unfamiliar with furniture assembly and may not have the experience or ready access to the tools necessary to properly assemble the subcomponents. In addition, manually aligning the often heavy and large subcomponents to install the fasteners for connecting the subcomponents can be difficult, particularly if a single individual is assembling the furniture item. Moreover, as the number of subcomponents assembled together increases, maneuvering the components becomes increasingly challenging as the weight and bulkiness of the assembly increases. A similar concern is that if the fasteners linking the subcomponents are not properly installed, the structural integrity of the furniture item could be compromised resulting in the furniture item collapsing possibly resulting in the injury of users.
Another challenge of RTA furniture kits is affixing fasteners to pre-upholstered furniture subcomponents can be difficult. With most RTA furniture kits, the interface surfaces between the various subcomponents are typically not easily accessible from the exterior of the furniture item following assembly. A common approach of accessing the interfacing surfaces is through the bottom of the seat box of the furniture item. However, this approach typically requires upending the couch and fastening the subcomponents while the furniture item is balanced on its side or back. The often awkward and precarious positioning of the furniture item during assembly can make alignment of the subcomponents even or more difficult. In particular, the awkward positioning can make the determination as to whether the subcomponents are properly aligned difficult. Similarly, if the fasteners are treaded through the pre-drilled holes, the awkward positioning of the subcomponents can create substantial friction making threading the subcomponents even more difficult.
Although there are numerous advantages to ready to RTA furniture systems, there is a need for an efficient means of assembling the subcomponents of the RTA furniture system by untrained or unskilled individuals while still providing an assembled furniture item that is aesthetically pleasing.